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Friday, October 27, 2006

Retro cricket: SA v Victoria day 1

The first day of the 4 day SA - Victoria match was played out today in a manner redolent of the 1950s, with a slow run rate and, towards the close of play, pre-daylight saving shadows creeping over the ground (see photo). The weather also harked back to pre global warming times and the football season: no rain, but a cool, turning to cold later in the day, southwesterly wind blowing. August in October is quite a change from the January in October we've had recently.

Victoria finished on 5/244 off the prescribed 96 overs: better than 4/122 which they were at one stage, but hardly a match winning score at this stage. Of course if the lower order can contribute another 100 or so (and the scoreboard lists Warne at number nine, so this may not be out of the question) then SA may struggle to build the lead they'll need to offset batting last.

The SA attack was generally tight and disciplined: the pitch gave Tait, Gillespie and Rofe some help, while the wind provided legspinner Bailey with some assistance. He bowled a long spell in the middle and final sessions and eventually picked up a second wicket, when he went back to over the wicket after several productive (for the batsmen) overs round the wicket.

A legspinner bowling round the wicket on the first day is most un-1950s (though Richie Benaud once famously won a test in 1961 bowling into the rough on the last day.

I'll be there tomorrow and look forward to watching the next stages of the contest.

Adelaide, capital of South Australia, a place (someone once said) which "is not exactly the end of the earth but if you stand on the roof you can see it".Matthew Engel Financial Times (UK) 9 December 2006.

A note about links in posts

Unless otherwise stated, all links to external sites which are mentioned in posts have been retrieved at the time of the relevant post. In some situations, eg when there are links to scorecards of matches, clicking on a link may give a later score than that described in the post (and sometimes prove my predictions wrong!).